


Other People

by Arokel



Series: A kind-of-crap demon [2]
Category: Christian Bible, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley decries colonialism, Crowley watches PBS, Found Family, I promise the literary references get less pretentious as it goes, Judas is just an angsty creature really, Light Angst, M/M, birds are fuckin' smart y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 14:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14239746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/Arokel
Summary: "Hasn't that poor man suffered enough?" Aziraphale said. "Why did you have to go and torture him further?"Crowley visits Judas in Hell. And then he visits again. And again. And - well, you know the saying. Friends can be hard to come by, down there.





	Other People

**Author's Note:**

> It's not what I would call a direct sequel, but this definitely interweaves with the events of _You're better than you pretend to be_. 
> 
> I'm posting it now to hold myself accountable since I'm working on about 8 other things right now so don't hold your breath for quick updates, but it WILL get done. Eventually.

Crowley stood before the door, hands in his pockets, for much longer than he would like to admit. It wasn’t that he was _afraid_ to go in, per se, it was just that – well, maybe he was a bit _apprehensive_. Because he hadn’t been there in almost thirteen hundred years, and he couldn’t know what sort of reception to expect. But he had come all this way, barely escaped an interminably boring conversation with Belphegor _(“I wish I could be up on the surface like you, all dashing and worldly; I bet you’ve got scores of mortals under your command, just waiting to serve your every whim, well, at least that’s what I would do- and I’d have them feed me grapes like in the paintings…”)_ and he was damned if he’d back out when he’d gone to all this trouble.

Even so, it took more mental preparation than it rightly should before he could open the door and step inside.

Judas lifted his head and regarded Crowley with tired eyes, and Crowley froze in the threshold, pinned in place by the piercing emptiness of that look. He got the discomfiting sense that he was being judged and found wanting.

“It’s been a while.”

Crowley shifted uncomfortably and left his hands in his pockets so Judas wouldn’t see them clenching and unclenching. “I know. I wasn’t- well. I was doing other things.”

“You didn’t want to come,” Judas translated.

“Not especially.” Feeling that he should explain himself, Crowley added, “it’s nothing personal, it’s just… it’s a bit dismal.”

“Is it,” Judas said flatly.

Crowley winced. “Well, better late than never.”

Judas gave a grunt that could have meant any number of things, though Crowley suspected _agreement_ wasn’t among them. He slumped backwards in his seat and closed his eyes briefly, as if he hoped Crowley would be gone when he opened them again.

And, just like that, they had run out of things to say. Crowley stood there with his hands in his pockets and Judas sat there with his ragged hair and tired eyes and neither of them said a word.

Crowley stood, and fidgeted, and clenched his fists in his pockets, and Judas just _sat there_ , stiller than Crowley could ever remember him being in life, sat there and watched Crowley make a fool of himself. It was unnerving.

Crowley took the opportunity to survey the room, mostly because it seemed like a plausible reason to keep avoiding Judas’ eyes. And, well, ‘room’ was a generous term. So was ‘cell’, if Crowley was being honest. ‘Pit’ might have been more accurate. The walls were the same rough-hewn reddish stone that manifested all throughout this wing of the underworld, illuminated by a harsh light that seemed to have no source and cast no shadows. The only furniture – again, generously described – was a small ledge cut into the rock of the far wall, which Judas currently occupied. All in all, unchanged since he last set foot in it.

Judas looked the same, too. A touch thinner, perhaps, his unkempt hair the same length as it had been in life, pale in the unearthly glow of the lights. It was his eyes that spoke to Crowley of exactly how long it had been, and that was why Crowley couldn’t meet them.

He stepped fully into the room and paused, even more unsure of what to do with himself now that he had committed to whatever sort of interaction they were about to have. He settled for leaning against the wall as casually as he could manage, even if it made him feel more like a jailer than a – whatever he was.

The silence had stretched well past the point of breaking when Judas finally spoke. “Used to be you could sweet-talk your way out of anything. What happened to all your honey-tongued words?”

He’d got knocked on his ass a few hundred times, that’s what happened. And he could be smooth enough, when he needed to be. Just not now. He’d exhausted his resources of honey with Judas the minute he walked into this room thirteen hundred years ago and failed to convince him of the truth.

“It doesn’t look like I thought it would,” he said instead, and cursed himself because he was only proving Judas right. Coming down had been a mistake after all. Crowley was a fool.

“Why would it have changed?” Judas said, and it might have been wishful thinking but it seemed to Crowley that there was maybe a touch more life in his voice, even if it was at Crowley’s expense. Crowley reconsidered his earlier assessment of the situation. If he could lift even a fraction of that unnatural calm from Judas’ shoulders, maybe feeling foolish was worth it.

“I thought they might have redecorated,” he tried. Judas raised his eyebrows, unimpressed, and his eyes were so, so tired.

“What sort of interior design did you have in mind?” Judas asked. He shifted on his ledge, leaning back as far as the wall allowed and crossing his legs in an approximation of how Crowley remembered him sitting in life. Crowley wondered if it was bravado, because if it was it was working better for Judas than it ever did for Crowley.

“Well, Brutus and Cassius, for one.”

Crowley wasn’t sure if he meant it as a joke or if he really had believed he’d find one of Alighieri’s ravings in place of the cell he remembered, but Judas gave no sign of recognition so it probably didn’t matter either way.

“Who?”

“You know, killed Caesar, damned for all eternity, part of some three-headed Satan-monster thing. Actually, you’re er, supposed to be the third part.“

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, the greatest traitors of antiquity, that sort of thing…”

“And we’re… the three heads of the devil?”

“No, each of you is caught in one of the heads and you’re being eaten alive for eternity - “ Crowley stopped. Judas looked blindsided, or devastated, or offended or any combination of those and Crowley was an idiot. An insensitive, unhelpful idiot.

There was a silence.

“Sounds a bit far-fetched,” Judas said.

He had uncrossed his legs and he still looked blindsided-devastated-offended, but he didn’t look like he was about to kick Crowley out, so all in all it could have gone worse. Crowley nearly sent thanks to the person whose fault this all was, really, before he remembered that said deity would not approve of him being there in the first place and was best not alerted to his presence by an ill-thought out thank you.

“Yes, well, you never can trust fiction,” he said instead, trying for glib. It didn’t work as well as it usually did. “Mass literacy is a dangerous thing.”

Judas shrugged. “It always sounded nice.” He said it easily, as if it was a casual observation and nothing more, but he’d finally moved his gaze from Crowley’s face to just over his shoulder and he was blinking quite a bit. Crowley didn’t understand what he’d done wrong this time.

“Pardon?”

Judas shrugged again. “I never learned. It would have been nice to be able to follow along with…” He trialed off, but it was clear who he meant. The silence stretched again, and Crowley searched for something, anything, that would bring back that spark of life he’d seen.

“I could teach you,” he said, surprising himself. He didn’t have the time to teach a condemned soul to _read_. He was a busy demon, with a, a job, and responsibilities, and – and Judas looked so sad, but his eyes had sparked a bit again at the suggestion, and Crowley would never admit to anyone that he had a soft spot for the man. “There isn’t much written in Aramaic these days – nothing at all, really, and your people are a bit… scattered, at the moment, but I could still – if you wanted…”

“I’d like that,” Judas said quietly. “The scriptures, first, and then… maybe I could read some of this Caesar stuff. I figure I ought to, since I’m in it.”

For once, Crowley didn’t try to hide his relieved grin. Who could Judas tell? “You’re in a lot of things.”

Judas’ responding smile was weak, but all in all a valiant attempt. “All positive, I’m sure.”

“To a one.”

That was how it began. Or rather, it began on a Sunday, thirteen hundred years before, or a winter, thirty years before that, or backwards and backwards past the creation of man and right to the source. But just the same as you could say that the Arrangement began in the twelfth century, Crowley decided that this, Judas, began here.


End file.
